Every couple of years, Marie Heath has to buy a new engine. Averaging 2000 kilometres a week, her car is on the frontline of her healthcare service that extends over a vast area of southern NSW.

Mrs Heath is a registered nurse and midwife increasingly picking up health services the mainstream medical establishment will not provide.

Goulburn-based Mrs Heath attends the pregnancies and births of up to 30 women a year, mainly in their homes, from Wollongong to Moruya, Campbelltown to Cootamundra. But she is also increasingly in demand for the general health advice and screening services she offers to those inaccessible to doctors.

She runs a weekly well-baby clinic in Canberra where she offers weighing and measuring, feeding and behavioural advice - all services ostensibly available through early childhood health centres.

"Women are telling me they have to wait seven to 10 weeks for a scheduled appointment," Mrs Heath said.

At her informal drop-in clinic in Belconnen Mall, Canberra, she might see up to 50 babies in the six-hour session, funded by the pharmacy in the hope of winning the new mothers as loyal customers.

Another day finds her at a Goulburn pharmacy, checking blood pressure, referring people to counsellors or dietitians, and - especially - reassuring the parents of children with low-grade illness.

Mrs Heath said this group was often unable to find a bulk-billing GP prepared to see a child at short notice for what would usually turn out to be a minor virus.

"The group I see being most disadvantaged are the children. The parents can't afford to have them seen, or they're sitting in the emergency department for hours . . . My type of practice isn't recognised in Australia because there are too few of us, but it [would have] great potential if we were recognised. I save the health system a huge amount of money."

At the Argyle Medical Centre in Goulburn, where Mrs Heath runs a weekly women's health clinic, Dr Ivan Wilden-Constantin said services offered by nurses, such as Pap smears and contraceptive advice, were a valuable option to women in towns without a female doctor.

Seven-week-old Nicholas Yeadon was born in the bath of his Goulburn home, delivered by his mother Cathy and father Danny without drugs or any other medical intervention. Mrs Heath attended the birth, as she did for the arrival of Nicholas's brother Lachlan, now 3, although Kyle, 5, was born in hospital.

"The one-to-one care was the biggest thing for me," Mrs Yeadon, 32, said.

"I was able to relate to one person, with my family . . . there was no disruption to the routine of my two [older] boys.

"They went to bed on Friday night and when they woke up on Saturday they had a baby brother. It was a very joyful morning."